This study examined a story in which mathematics word problems were embedded in the context of students' mathematics word problem-solving achievement. This story was presented on the computer and paper. Students (n = 115) were grouped based on their reading abilities as high and low readers. They were then randomly assigned to story groups where they solved the same mathematics word problems in computer-story, paper-story, and non-story conditions. Upon completing the treatments, the students in the story groups answered story-related questions to reveal their story comprehension. The results suggested that the computer-story intervention, in which mathematics word problems were embedded, was significantly more helpful for high readers than for low readers. High readers solved the problems within the computer story better than the low readers. The low readers' problem-solving in computer story vs. paper story did not differ. Implications were presented based on the students' story comprehension results.

Students come to classrooms with varying degrees of knowledge about a respective subject, and this variance in background knowledge affects instruction as well as comprehension. Anchored instruction involves the use of a shared experience, or anchor, as a basis from which to develop understanding and provides a way to link teaching within a "macrocontext". An anchor can be anything that all students can experience and that can be easily revisited. The Integrated Curriculum Project tested a 3-week-long, anchored instruction unit about the Holocaust in two eighth-grade classrooms. The project was designed to reduce the academic and social difficulties of middle school students with mild disabilities through the development, implementation, and evaluation of an instructional system that incorporates instructional anchors and related curriculum, including the STEPS+G framework. One of the areas that students and teacher identified initially as difficult for students to negotiate was conducting research for their STEPS+G area.

This chapter begins by describing how multimedia cases built around literacy instruction in kindergarten through third grade classrooms were developed as a part of the CTELL project and implemented in preservice literacy education courses across several states. It will also discuss the uses of concept maps for assessing preservice teacher understanding of effective literacy instruction, including what is known about concept maps as an assessment tool, as well as the implications for developing and analyzing a concept map as a measure of student understanding. The CTELL cases are built of many components, spanning video, audio, and visual data. The content aspects of CTELL cases situate literacy instruction in specific, contextualized instances of classroom instruction and decision making. Concept maps were chosen as a form of assessment that would illustrate both the content and the structure of a participant's knowledge.

This chapter suggests that a dual-level theory of new literacies is a useful approach to theory building in a world where the nature of literacy continuously changes. It begins by making a central point: Social contexts have always shaped both the function and form of literate practices and been shaped by them in return. The chapter discusses the social context of the current period and explain how this has produced new information and communication technologies, and the new literacies that the technologies demand. It explores several lowercase new literacies perspectives that are emerging. The chapter argues that a dual-level New Literacies theory is essential to take full advantage of this important and diverse work. It presents one lowercase theory of new literacies, the new literacies of online research and comprehension, to illustrate how a dual-level theory of new literacies can inform new literacies research that takes related but different theoretical perspectives.

In this article we argue that to study or apply games as learning environments, multiple perspectives have to be taken into account. We first define game-based learning and gamification, and then discuss theoretical models that describe learning with games, arguing that playfulness is orthogonal to learning theory. We then review design elements of games that facilitate learning by fostering learners' cognitive, behavioral, affective, and sociocultural engagement with the subject matter. Finally, we discuss the basis of these design elements in cognitive, motivational, affective, and sociocultural foundations by reviewing key theories from education and psychology that are the most pertinent to game-based learning and by describing empirical research on learning with games that has been or should be conducted. We conclude that a combination of cognitive, motivational, affective, and sociocultural perspectives is necessary for both game design and game research to fully capture what games have to offer for learning.

Recently, Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs) have attracted attention in the educational gaming field, but research with such devices is sparse. This study used the Emotiv EPOC BCI neuroheadset to investigate the affordances of using BCI as a game controller and its potential effect on learning and positive player experiences, with a view to providing implications for designing educational games. The study showed that the Emotiv interface helped participants learn abstract symbols and their associated English meanings as well as those who did not use the headset. Additionally, the BCI shows promising potential as fun and engagement were consistently higher throughout the game. Educational game designers can consider the potential of BCIs and how they can take advantage of increased engagement towards better learning.

Reading to young children has a number of benefits, including supporting the acquisition of vocabulary and literacy skills. Digital reading games, including ones with new modes of interface such as the Kinect for Xbox, may provide similar benefits in part by allowing dynamic in-game activities. However, these activities may also be distracting and detract from learning. Children (ages 5-7 years, N = 39) were randomly assigned to either i) jointly read a story with an adult, ii) have the story read by a character in a Kinect game, or iii) have the story read by a character in a Kinect game plus in-game activities. Both Kinect-Activities and Book Reading groups had significant gains for High Frequency Words, Active Decoding, and Total Reading Score, but only ICinect-Activities group had significant gain for Sight words (p < .05). Overall, these findings are encouraging for the next generation of digital literacy games. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Games allow players to perceive themselves in alternate ways in imagined worlds. Player identification is one of the outcomes of gameplay experiences in these worlds and has been shown to affect enjoyment and reduce self-discrepancy. Avatar-based customization has potential to impact player identification by shaping the relationship between the player and the character. This mixed method study aims to fill the gap in the identification literature by examining the effects of avatar-based customization on players' identification with and empathy towards their characters in a massively multiplayer online game, Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO). Participants (N = 66) played LotRO either in customization or in no-customization groups for about ten hours in four sessions over two weeks in a controlled lab setting. Data were collected through interviews, surveys and observations. Results showed both time and avatar-based customization positively impacted players' identification with their avatars. Self-Determination Theory is used to interpret results.

Researchers have argued that an effort should be made to raise teachers' and parents' awareness of the potentially positive educational benefits of playing video games (e.g., see Baek, 2008). One part of this effort should be to increase understanding of how video games can be situated within teachers' existing goals and knowledge of learning and instruction. However, relatively little research on game-based learning addresses teachers (Ketelhut & Schifter, 2011), and for many a gap remains between the apparent enthusiasm of researchers and policy makers relative to the potential of educational games and the attendant practicalities of selecting and implementing video games in classroom settings. This article begins to bridge this gap by providing research-based areas of awareness and a discussion of factors that can facilitate understanding related to choosing and using video games. To this end, we show how educational games can be conceptualized from different theoretical perspectives on learning and discuss a number of essential design issues that educators should take into account when considering a video game for educational use.

This chapter describes a technology-centered intervention project to demonstrate the benefits of a multimodal, Web-based platform, STEPS to Literacy, for teaching academic writing to Latina/o adolescent learners of English. After laying out a theoretical and empirical rationale, the authors provide details about the design features and instructional approach that support student writing. Next, an example is given of the use of STEPS in the classroom, in which eighth-grade students with the teacher's guidance analyze multimodal documents, take notes, and write an essay for a unit on the Civil Rights Movement. A summary of the benefits of such an online system for academic writing development is outlined, and a set of points for teachers to consider for planning and implementation in the classroom concludes the chapter.

The design of, and research on, digital games for learning has been hampered by the lack of a comprehensive design framework of game-based learning that incorporates essential elements unique to learning from this genre. Broadening the scope to playful learning, we therefore propose an integrated approach to the design of these learning environments that brings together cognitive, affective, and socio-cultural perspectives to form a comprehensive learning sciences perspective. We first define playful learning and its characteristics as well as the different forms of learner engagement it entails. We then discuss each of the three perspectives, which aspects of playful learning they emphasize, and which they de-emphasize. We then describe key theoretical contributions to the design of playful learning from the three approaches. Finally, we draw conclusions from the emerging model, including suggestions for future research on the design of games for learning.

This chapter suggests that a dual-level theory of new literacies is a useful approach to theory building in a world where the nature of literacy continuously changes. It begins by making a central point: Social contexts have always shaped both the function and form of literate practices and been shaped by them in return. The chapter discusses the social context of the current period and explain how this has produced new information and communication technologies, and the new literacies that the technologies demand. It explores several lowercase new literacies perspectives that are emerging. The chapter argues that a dual-level New Literacies theory is essential to take full advantage of this important and diverse work. It presents one lowercase theory of new literacies, the new literacies of online research and comprehension, to illustrate how a dual-level theory of new literacies can inform new literacies research that takes related but different theoretical perspectives.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a computer-based story on sixth grade students' mathematics word problem solving achievement. Problems were embedded in a story presented on a computer, and then compared to a paper-based story and to a condition that presented the problems as typical, isolated words problems. One hundred and twenty eight sixth grade students (77 male, 51 female) from two public middle schools in the city of Erzurum, Turkey, participated in this study. All participants completed mathematics word problem solving test which was used to determine students' pre-treatment level of problem solving achievement. In addition, the participants completed a reading comprehension pretest which was used to assess their reading abilities, ultimately categorizing them as high and low readers within the sample. High and low readers were then randomly assigned to one of the treatment groups in which they solved the same mathematics word problems: computer-story, paper-story and isolated word problems (non-story). After completing the treatments, all students solved mathematics word problems on a post-treatment test. Additionally, students in the story treatments (computer-story and paper-story) completed a story comprehension posttest that was used to evaluate their story comprehension. A one-way analysis of covariance, ANCOVA, and a two-way analysis of variance, ANOVA, were used to analyze students' achievement in the treatment groups. The results suggest that students in the computer story treatment had significantly higher problem solving achievement scores than students in the paper story and isolated word problems treatments. In addition, the story was found to be significantly more effective than the non-story treatment when it was presented on computer. Moreover, both high and low readers gained significantly higher problem solving achievement scores in the computer story vs. the isolated word problems treatment. The results also suggest that the computer story was more effective on high readers' problem solving practices than on the low readers' during their problem solving practices, and high readers' word problem solving achievement levels were significantly higher during their problem solving practices in the computer story treatment than in the other two treatments. Implications for anchored instruction theory, educators, and future studies are provided.

This study modified an existing educational video game by varying a learning mechanic and an assessment mechanic. The result was multiple versions of the same game with identical game mechanics but different learning and assessment variables. The impact of these variables was examined to determine their impact on three dependent variables: learning, motivation, and in-game performance. One hundred thirty-eight (N=138) sixth grade students were randomly assigned to play one of the four versions of the game. After thirty minutes of play, results suggest that providing players with a choice of non-player character from whom to receive feedback results in significantly higher learning outcomes and desire to continue playing compared to a non-choice condition. Comparisons between informative and elaborative feedback did not influence student any of the dependent variables. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed within the context of educational game design and research.

This paper will present a tool and a method to help game developers make decisions about creating visual assets such as game characters. It will also present results from a series of studies. The first study utilized this research tool to investigate middle school students’ attitudes toward sixty game characters in the area of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in commercial games. The second study used the most liked and disliked characters (by gender) determined by the first study in an educational game as science mentors. After presenting the effects of using these characters in motivation of students towards the game, the paper will conclude with research-based implications for educational game designers wanting to maximize motivation through the use of game characters in STEM-related educational games. Readers will also be informed about a method useful for developing visual game assets, and insight about creating characters for STEM educational games.

Most educators agree that we must help students learn to think for themselves and to solve problems (e.g., Feuerstein, 1979; Linn, 1986; Mann, 1979; Segal, Chipman, & Glaser, 1985). This emphasis on thinking has prompted educators to focus their attention on processes involved in thinking rather than only on the contents of thought. Nevertheless, research demonstrates that knowledge of important content-knowledge of concepts, theories, and principles-empowers people to think effectively. Without appropriate knowledge, people's ability to think and solve problems is relatively weak (e.g., Bransford, Sherwood, Vye, & Rieser, 1986; Newell, 1980; Simon, 1980).